Wall Street's foreclosure sale to foreigners

It's no secret that America has financed its budget deficits from foreigners. Of course, we also buy tons of goods from foreigners.

Now, Wall Street is pitching foreigners for big slugs capital. So far it's working with more than $90 billion raised within the past few months, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Actually, this is not a new thing. If anything, the US has a long history of being wild and crazy with finances (examples: crash of 1929, the junk bond binge, the S&L crisis, the conglomerate craze and so on). After all, back in the 1800s, the U.S. financial system relied heavily on foreign sources of capital.

However, this time it's premier financial firms – such as Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) – that are selling large amounts of equity to some foreign buyers known as sovereign funds.

While no doubt these funds see big-time opportunities as the investments include juicy protections and dividend yields, foreign governments also realize that the U.S. needs to stay afloat. Despite the talk of "decoupling" of the global economy, the fact remains that the U.S. is the mega spender. Foreign governments, therefore, need to play ball with the US.

With the heated presidential election, the sovereign investments are certainly a topic of debate. But Wall Street has moved with incredible speed to complete these investments and has tried to structure the transactions as passive arrangements.

Finally, the Wall Street Journal piece also indicates that there has been lots of enthusiasm from sovereign funds. In other words, based on the due diligence, they see lots of opportunities here – at least for the long-term.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.